From: PhaedrusWolf@aol.com
Date: Wed Dec 08 2004 - 22:40:23 GMT
Maybe I just missed it, or it will be posted later, but I wrote this
earlier. Since it has not posted on the email as of yet, I thought I might
change a
few things about it that may have appeared as an attack on one individual's
thinking here.
I hope that nothing I offer appears to be personal attacks; it truly is an
attack on the idea as opposed to an attack on the person.
>From "Zen"
"And what is written well and what is written badly...need we ask Lysias or
any other poet or orator who ever wrote or will write either a political or
other work, in meter or out of meter, poet or prose writer, to teach us this
?"
<B>What is good, PhE6drus, and what is not good...need we ask anyone to te
ll
us these things? </B>
It is what he was saying months before in the classroom in Montana, a
message Plato and every dialectician since him had missed, since they all so
ught to
define the Good in its intellectual relation to things. But what he sees now
is how far he has come from that. He is doing the same bad things himself.
His original goal was to keep Quality undefined, but in the process of batt
ling
against the dialecticians he has made statements, and each statement has
been a brick in a wall of definition he himself has been building around
Quality. Any attempt to develop an organized reason around an undefined qua
lity
defeats its own purpose. The organization of the reason itself defeats the
quality. Everything he has been doing has been a fool's mission to begin wi
th.
. . . A person who knows how to fix motorcycles...with Quality...is less
likely to run short of friends than one who doesn't. And they aren't going t
o
see him as some kind of object either. Quality destroys objectivity every ti
me.
Or if he takes whatever dull job he's stuck with...and they are all, sooner
or later, dull...and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for option
s
of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, th
us
making an art out of what he is doing, he's likely to discover that he
becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the pe
ople
around him because his Quality decisions change him too. And not only the j
ob
and him, but others too because the Quality tends to fan out like waves. Th
e
Quality job he didn't think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person
who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is likely to pass that
feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going.
<B>My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the
world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all.
</B>
God, I don't want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of
social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out.
These
can be left alone for a while. There's a place for them but they've got to
be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. We've h
ad
that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural resource
without knowing it, and now it's just about depleted. Everyone's just about
out of
gumption. And I think it's about time to return to the rebuilding of this
American resource...individual worth. There are political reactionaries who'
ve
been saying something close to this for years. I'm not one of them, but to
the extent they're talking about real individual worth and not just an excu
se
for giving more money to the rich, they're right. We do need a return to
individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We really d
o. I
hope that in this Chautauqua some directions have been pointed to." </end
quote>
If we can't come up with a better philosophy than Quality -- that can bette
r
explain how "any improvement of the world will be done," then what are our
efforts all about? Is it so we can claim some trophy for finding the answer
to
some queston? Is it at all possible that we can come up with a theory that
better explain than all the theories that have gone before us, that can als
o
be so accepted that it changes the whole nature of the way the world views
things? -- what are the odds?
History has past, and the future is not here yet. If we are to improve the
future, we need to improve the present; this actual space 'In' time we occup
y.
Quality can be created in the moment it happens, or it can be found in the
moment it happens, or it can be thrust upon us by a profound thought that co
mes
to us in the night without any effort at all; without even contemplating it
.
All it takes is accepting it as it is. It doesn't require an explanation,
and doesn't require a definition; we know it when we see it, and it can't b
e
wrong because it is our own personal Quality that helps us to make sense of
life within, or the chaos without. It doesn't need description, or instruct
ions;
all it needs is us to take our doubts out of its way.
Everything that Pirsig built is through this Quality that Phaedrus found.
The fact this profound discovery came from an individual that society and
science saw fit to shock back into the Mythos of the day should tell us som
ething
about society and science, just as drugging children in school so they will
conform to the rules society places on them to attend school, as opposed to
conform the school system to conform to these, our highest Quality hopes for
the
future. My personal opinion on this is the children can teach the teacher
something about Quality, and we old farts who have had our prjudices toward
any
form of Quality disturbing our safe and comfortable littles lives that we
cannot see what is right in front of our eyes; the children can, if we let
them.
It might also tell us a little about reason as well. Was what Phaedrus
sought reasonable? Could we have possibly known, or would we have even cons
idered
what he was offering if we hadn't read his whole Chautauqua? Can it be as
Shaw saw it;
<B>"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress
depends on the unreasonable man."</B>
There is something inherently wrong with the idea that we cannot find
Quality without having it defined for us. It is not the definition of Qualit
y that
holds us back, but the predetermined bias toward our own static myths that
we
fear letting go of.
What more is there to Quality? It is, not only before, in between, and the
product of everything we do, it is so simple, and so real, that all we have
to
do is experience it, or even imagine it to recognize it.
Philosophy can change the world, but only Quality philosophy.
What is the question mark in Quality? Of all the dialectic terms we have
managed over all the years we have asked all the quesitons we have asked, wh
at
term more fits the missing link in our metaphysics to bring sense to all the
wrangling of dialectic terms?
The MOQ levels are the map; Quality is the guide. This is the simplicity I
see in this. If it is something other than this simplistic, but grand Dynami
c
Quality, I can't see what it could be.
Chin
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